A 7-year strategic document on Ghana’s Health Financing aimed at reducing financial barriers to access health care in Ghana was last Friday launched in Accra.
On the theme “Health Financing Mechanisms for Universal Health Coverage”, the strategy, which spans from 2023–2030, seeks to improve resource mobilisation to ensure sufficient and predictable revenue while promoting equity in the distribution of health resources and use of health services.
Launching the strategy, the President’s Representative, Ministry of Health, Dr Bernard Okoe-Boye, in a speech read on his behalf by the Chief Director, Alhaji Hafiz Adam, said the strategy was designed to provide all people with access to needed health (including prevention, promotion, treatment and rehabilitation) of sufficient quality and ensure that users are not exposed to financial hardship.
He said the health financing strategy laid out specific strategies and activities to directly address the key longstanding issues facing Ghana’s health financing system.
These strategies, he said, focused on efficiency and expenditure management while considering how to tackle critical revenue problems.
“In accordance with the Universal Health Care (UHC) Roadmap of improving service delivery at the lower levels, the strategy looks at how to strengthen purchasing of primary healthcare (PHC) services at the lower levels through the Network of Practice (NoP).
It also looks at how to enhance provider autonomy, management and accountability to receive and use funds. In addition, it addresses NHIS revenue issues, including revenue mobilisation for the sector, pooling of funds, better defined benefit package, prioritisation of investment across the country, strengthened governance (health financing policy and legal framework) and monitoring and evaluation,” he added.
Dr Okoe-Boye said the implementation of the strategy was currently ongoing and the ministry had reviewed the Essential Health Services Package to include more preventive and other non-communicable diseases onto the benefit package for implementation.
“NHIS tariff review is underway and the implementation of the NoP which aims at reorganising service delivery at the lower level to provide quality of care is also ongoing,” he added.
He commended all its agencies and partners who supported the development of the document, especially the World Health Organisation (WHO) who provided the funding and technical support, and urged them to support the implementation of the strategy to improve quality healthcare system in the country.
The DP Lead, Ag. WHO Country Representative to Ghana, Dr Frank John Lule, said the launch of the strategy was timely as it comes at a time when Ghana was also rolling out other key strategies such as NoP for achieving UHC.
“This innovative PHC service delivery design must be aligned with the expected new financing structure and, indeed, we as development partners are happy to note that the revised health financing strategy seeks to provide practical guidance and solutions to financing primary healthcare in Ghana,” he said.
Prof. Kasolo re-affirmed WHO’s commitment to assisting the government build a resilient health system that places sustainable financing at the centre of health delivery.
BY VIVIAN ARTHUR
